technicalities

April 18, 2010

First: No, I still haven't seen Kick-Ass, though I probably will by the end of the week. A pale glimmer of hope still burns deep within my heart that somehow something good could be harvested from the fairly execrable source material.* But I have been reading much about it in the last few days. To wit:

Roger Ebert did not like it, not at all. In fact, it made him sad. That's perhaps the biggest strike against it yet. I like Roger Ebert. I don't like things that make Roger Ebert sad. He's a nice guy, and he doesn't need to be made sad. More to the point, his reasons: they mostly involve children and violence, not the deeper elements of "missing the point of superheroes" that I discussed in my review of the comic. Let's be clear about this: it's not the violence that bothered me in Kick-Ass-- that is, not the violence alone. Lots of things that I like are violent, and I think violence in entertainment serves important social and psychological purposes. But, in genre terms, the violence needs to be there for a reason beyond itself.** In Kick-Ass-- the comic, at least-- the violence is there simply to be "kick-ass," in support of a story that is no story.

In response, Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News writes a rebuttal that rebuts... nothing. Instead of offering an argument against Ebert's points or a defense of the role that violence plays in the film, he meanders on for a few paragraphs about how the movie isn't for kids, kids today are different than they were in the '50s, and in the '50s kids played with guns anyway, but kids will probably see it despite its R rating, and what were we talking about again? Indeed, by arguing that "the sort of kids that will see Kick-Ass this weekend are well prepared for it," he actually ends up explaining exactly why the film makes Ebert sad, perhaps better than Ebert himself did.

I quite like Slate's review, because it basically says all the stuff I said about the comic (so maybe I wasn't misreading the whole thing all along!). According to Dana Stevens, the film

never provides a reason for Dave's transformation into Kick-Ass beyond his vague adolescent notion that being a superhero sounds neat. That may be enough to justify Dave's embarking on the experiment, but it doesn't explain why he continues to venture out in costume after being beaten, stabbed, and hit by a car.

Late in the movie, in voice-over, Dave puts a glum twist on a line from Spider-Man: "With no power comes no responsibility." If this film proposed any alternate moral vision, that line might count a sly reappropriation of the original. As the prelude to a climactic orgy of bloodletting set to the punk anthem "Bad Reputation," the joke comes off as nihilistic and flip. What do these characters consider worthy of killing and dying for? That a protagonist lacks superpowers is no reason for him to lack motivation, conviction, or purpose.

Nicely put. Hey, she even said "nihilistic"!

Echoing another thread from my review of the comic, friend of this blog Erin Snyder writes on the Middle Room that the movie isn't fun. And might have (gasp) benefitted from being toned down by a studio.

On the other hand, another friend (who watched the movie, very likely with Mr. Snyder, but has not read the comic) informs me that many of the lines I quoted in my review appear in the movie in contexts different enough to invert their original meanings. And I know that the "first mission" was changed from beating up graffiti writers to beating up honest-to-goodness burglars, which likely lessens the racial overtones that irked me. So maybe the film gives more context and a better sense of purpose to the character? I dunno; I'll find out soon.

Lastly, Millar's recent interview with the Onion AV Club is worth reading. He has some interesting things to say about, for instance, the role that conservatism and conservative characters play in his work. I think he's a bit in error, though, in describing Superman and Batman as "law-enforcement people" and "authority figures." I actually think that superheroes are countercultural figures who critique or even undermine society's values rather than uphold them. More on this later...

*That hope mostly has to do with McLovin, because that kid is hilarious.

**For this reason I hated the French horror film High Tension/Haute Tension, which has some extreme, and extremely unpleasant, violence at the beginning. Until the final moments of the film, I was hoping it would give me some kind of payoff to justify that unpleasantness; instead it served up one of the worst twists in film history.

April 15, 2010

Sorry to be a contrarian, folks, but I am anything but excited about Kick-Ass. In fact, I hated just about everything about the comic series it's based on, which I felt totally missed the point of superheroes in its ham-fisted attempt at satirizing the genre and its fans. I feel so strongly about it that I wrote a lengthy essay on the story's many, many failings, which you can read as a guest post at SF Signal. An excerpt:

The problem is that Kick-Ass wants to be a superhero, but his conception of heroism is all wrong. “We only get one life,” he says, “and I wanted mine to be exciting.” He sees the thrills, the violence, but not the underlying sense of moral mission. He says himself that he has no real origin, that “It didn't take a trauma to make you wear a mask... Just the perfect combination of loneliness and despair.” But Spider-Man or Batman's trauma isn’t just a throwaway aspect of their stories; it’s the guiding force behind their every action. A hero who begins with nothing but “loneliness and despair,” not an all-consuming moral imperative to improve the world, is by definition a nihilistic figure. Dave Lizewski is really not a superhero at all—in genre classic terms, he’s Peter Parker after the radioactive spider-bite but before the death of Uncle Ben. His actions aren’t altruistic in the least—he continues putting on the costume because he likes to ride the ego wave that comes from his Youtube fame... In a recent interview Millar stated that Kick-Ass dons his costume “because it's the right thing to do. In a weird way, if you push past all the blood and the swearing, it's quite a moral tale.” But because the character lacks a complete origin, a reason to think that what he’s doing is the right thing, it’s not a moral tale—in fact, it’s a decidedly amoral one. And without the sense of a moral mission, he’s simply not a superhero. Without murdered parents, Batman wouldn’t be a hero; he’d just be a guy who dresses up and punch people—which is basically what Kick-Ass is. In short, the book simply doesn’t understand the genre it purports to be commenting on. Superheroes work in large part because of the heroic myth at their core. In throwing out this central, defining trait of that myth, Kick-Ass loses any resonance it might have otherwise had.

While researching this essay, I learned that Mark Millar, writer of the comic and executive producer of the film, is a Catholic who attends mass every week. Given my interpretation of Kick-Ass as an amoral, nihilistic, Ennisian mess, I don't know what to make of that fact. Any thoughts? Share 'em below.

March 20, 2010

A while back I wrote a short piece for Religion Dispatches on an odd news item involving the U.K.-based Church of Jediism, involving a would-be Sith Lord's drunken attack on one of the Church's founders and, more importantly, the powerful impact that media attention can have on new religious movements. The Church of the Jedi is in the news again-- a member is claiming that Jobcentre, a job-training organization, discriminated against him by demanding that he remove his hood indoors. Chris Jarvis argues that going hooded in public is part of his faith. "Muslims can walk around in whatever religious gear they like," he noted, "so why
can’t I?" After receiving his official complaint, Jobcentre apologized. The Times' religion blog notes that the Church of the Jedi's founder, Daniel Jones, was involved in a similar dispute with Tesco last year, whose response to his complaint was anything but conciliatory: "Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without
ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor
as one who never removed his hood."

As with last year's drunken Vader attack, media coverage of this kind of story only helps small groups like the Church of Jediism, no matter how sneering it may be. For a church that literally started at a backyard barbecue, international press coverage, even as news-of-the-weird items, gives them a farther reach than they could ever have on their own. And given the amount of coverage this group has gotten in the last two years, it seems the Force is strong with this new religious movement.

Most people who debate science vs. religion tend to ask the same boring question. Does God exist?Yawn. However, the question in all of these stories is never “Do these
beings really exist?” The question is “What do we call them?” It’s
never “Does this force actually exist?” It’s, “What do we call it?” Or
“How do we treat it?” Or “How do we interact with it?” One of the many
things that fascinates me about these stories is that the thing,
whatever it is—a being, a force—always exists. Some choose to
acknowledge it via gratitude, giving it a place of honor, organizing
their lives around it and allowing it to feed them spiritually. Others
simply use it as a thing, a tool, taking from it what they will when
they will then calling it a day. But neither reaction negates the
existence of the thing.

I like the treatment of "Does God exist?" as a dull and tired debate. The first thing that question brings to my mind is "How are you defining 'God'?" Chances are the questioner is rolling up more than a few assumptions with that word. Even the most atheistic of scientists (and, yes, I'm thinking specifically of Richard Dawkins) can start to sound downright mystical when they start talking about the vastness of the universe or the philosophical concept of a "scientific law." So, yes, I think Jusino is right to argue that "what we call it" and "how we treat it" are more interesting ways to approach the interplay of science and religion than tired old atheist-versus-creationist fight.

Joe Laycock reviews Daybreakers for Religion Dispatches, finding Eucharistic themes amidst the blood-soaked chaos. I haven't seen the movie, but its vampire society is an intriguing premise (however much it may crib from the end of I Am Legend). And for the Marty Martin Center, Mr. Laycock has also penned a brief discussion of Avatarthat draws a parallel between the planet-ravaging, sinful humans of that film with the planet-ravaging, sinful humans of C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet and its sequels. I recently read Joe's excellent exploration of real life vampires, Vampires Today, which is an intriguing and extraordinarily well-written look at a subculture with some unexpectedly religious elements. And you can read it too.

For the Guardian, Toby Lichtig takes a quick look at secular apocalypticism. He points out an interesting contrast between environmental nightmares and Cold War nuclear scenarios:

Put simply, the difference between the current threat and older ones is this: we are all, personally, to blame. Almost everyone (especially in the well-read west) is doing their bit
to make the world a warmer place, and thus we are all implicated in the
calamity that will this time surely spell the End.

This pushes secular apocalypse back into religious territory. Nuclear war can't be framed as punishment for individual sin, but environmental collapse can. Of course, it's not just climate-change nightmares that can be framed this way: as I pointed out in my review of Cloverfield, some giant monster attacks may be caused by your inconsiderate cell phone use.

Scott Timberg has written a six-part series on Philip K. Dick's Orange County years for the Los Angeles Times, which is particularly interesting because it was in those years that Dick had his vivid religious experiences. Timberg tackles that topic in part four, treating it generally as a "mystery" that can never be solved, and giving a bit too much credence to Thomas Disch, who I believe was sorely mistaken about the nature of Dick's religious thought. It would have been nice to have a paragraph or two about the actual content of Dick's theological writing-- but I guess asking for theology in the LA Times might be a fool's errand.

January 09, 2010

The subject of SF theology has been widely-discussed for the last
week, thanks to James Cameron's Avatar. (It would have to happen when
I'm on vacation, huh?) In a column for the New York Times, Ross Douthat
demonizes the film for its pantheism; Beliefnet's Pagan blogger Gus di
Zerega praises it for the same; for Religion Dispatches, C. Joshua
Villines frames the film as a ritual of atonement for "the sins of
commercialism and Western triumphalism"; even the Daily Show had its say. The encounter between religion
and capitalism is a central aspect of Avatar's story, so theology is at
the center of the film's very message-y message.

Avatar tells
the story of Jake Sully, a paraplegic Marine who is sent to the distant
moon Pandora to operate an "Avatar"-- a hybrid clone designed to let
Earthlings blend in with the alien Na'vi and negotiate with them on
behalf of a human-run mining operation. He assists Dr. Grace Augustine
(choose your own referents for the symbolism in that name), the
designer of the avatars, and Col. Quaritch, the mean ol' military
commander in charge of protecting the mining operations from native
attacks.

The natives in question are the Na'vi, a species of
extraordinarily tall blue-skinned humanoids who live in a really big
tree. Their culture is based around climbing trees, riding various
jungle animals, and communing with Eywa, an apparent earth- (or is that
"moon-?") goddess. We come to learn that this communion is concrete--
the Na'vi have a cluster of tentacles mixed in with their hair that
enables them to do all kinds of neat things, from linking up to steeds
(both ground-based and flying) and connect to their world's network of
living things. "Eywa," we realize, isn't some ethereal
personification of nature; it's an actual, contactable world-mind, and
the Na'vi experience it directly by plugging in their nerve clusters to
a particular "sacred grove."

Of course, the mining corporation
doesn't care about any of that, so they send their enormous bulldozers
and gunships to chop down every tree that the Na'vi care about in order
to get to their unobtanium (and oh my goodness I wish Cameron had just
used the fanspeak as a placeholder until they could come up with a
properly SFnal-sounding mineral name for the final script). Sully,
meanwhile, goes native, falling in love with an alien girl and becoming
the greatest military leader in Na'vi history. With the help of a few
"nice" humans, he's able to drive back the human thugs and save the
Na'vi from certain doom.

Most of the discussion of religion in
Avatar has focused on the Na'vi's pantheism. I wasn't too impressed
with this aspect of the film, to be honest, and not because I think
pantheism is a Bad Thing (indeed, I lean toward it a bit, though at the
end of the day I'm more into panentheism). Rather, I thought it was a
bit on the lazy, underdeveloped side. Though I loved most of the
creature designs (I recognized the very skilled
hand of Wayne Barlowe immediately), I found the
Na'vi culture to be human, all too human. These are supposed to be
aliens, but their culture comes across like a New Age-y romanticization
of African and Native American culture-- the monolithization of which
is part of the problem. (Few things bug me as much as the
homogenization of disparate cultures in New Age spirituality-- it's
really just a kinder, gentler cultural imperialism.)

There is one really interesting thing about the Na'vi's Gaea
religion, though, and that is its basis in their lived experience. They
don't just believe that all life is linked, they have the biological
hardware to plug into their planet's organic-electric network and
experience it. This was the single most original aspect of the
alien biology and culture, but I don't think its implications were
pushed far enough-- with the result being a half-baked nature
spirituality instead of a truly alien culture.

The
verifiability of the Na'vi religion is important in the story. A key
moment comes when the dying Dr. Augustine, connected to the roots of
Pandora's planetary bio-network, announces with her final breath that
the Na'vi deity is real. By connecting to the bioelectric network that
is Eywa, she "proves" the Na'vi religion. Of course, that proof means
nothing to Col. Quaritch, the very-very-bad military leader, who makes
mockery of the alien religion a key part of morale-building. His
statement that the Na'vi believe their god protects the Tree of Souls
earns a group chuckle from his subordinates-- a reaction that seems
particularly callous after the destruction we've already seen them
wreak upon the aliens. The placement of the comment suggests that this
kind of religious prejudice is central to the heartlessness the
soldiers display, and, more broadly, that wedding this kind of
belief-hatred to military conflict is a way to fast-track the
dehumanization that war requires. This kind of thing doesn't just
happen in imaginary battles in space, either-- witness atheist
spokesman Christopher Hitchens' support of assorted wars in Muslim
countries, which is more than a little bit linked to his-- let's say
"strong dislike"-- of Islam. The
evil corporation is atheistic (as are, ultimately, all corporations),
and that atheism is part of its heartlessness: it is able to wreak
cruel devastation because it sees nothing to respect in the religion at
the center of the Na'vi culture.

The fact that the Na'vi religion is "provable" is intriguing, but
Elliot
(of Claw of the Conciliator) brought up an interesting point to me-- does this
mean the oppression and exploitation of the Na'vi would be OK if their
religion weren't based on the scientific fact of their biological
abilities? What does the Na'vi ability to demonstrate the grounding of
their religious experience say about the faith of those of us who don't
have planet-communicating nerve clusters growing out of our heads?

Faith-versus-reason isn't the only thing in Avatar that's more
complicated than it may at first appear. There's actually an ironic bit
of imperialism at the heart of the story, which suggests that the Na'vi
would be helpless if not for the white earthling who dresses up in
alien drag and becomes their messiah. And technology gets a boost, as
well: the final fight scene shows us Sully (operating his Avatar)
fighting Quaritch (operating a big mecha-suit) to protect his alien
bride (operating a panther-like predator via her nerve connection)--
all three are using technology of a sort, and it's Sully's, which is a
sort of middle ground between the two, that we're supposed to find the
neatest.

Of course, all of this is ignoring the single most important thing
about Avatar, which is the fact that it's really, really pretty. (Wayne
Barlowe, people!) Ultimately, plot, character, and themes are all
secondary to the central concern of this film, which is spectacle.
There are good guys, and bad guys, and the fact that that religion--
its absence, and its presence (with "proof")-- is part of the division
is interesting. But it's important to remember that-- hey, look at that
funky rhino-thing!

November 21, 2009

Get Religion and Beliefnet report that Dimension Films has hired a PR firm known for marketing to conservative Christians to help push The Road. The adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's relentlessly bleak postapocalyptic narrative might seem a tough product to sell to the notoriously-picky Christian market; the story involves lots of violence and cannibalism and not a single cute penguin. Still, Beliefnet thinks the effort to get Christians into the theater is a good thing, arguing that "bringing the movie to evangelicals and other conservative believers may
signal that Hollywood is ready to take them seriously as consumers." Get Religion is worried that the move is wrongheaded, since the kind of redemption found in more religious end-times tales is "is nowhere to be found in The Road."

That contention implies to me that they haven't read the book, at least not all the way through. In my review of the novel a couple years ago, I described it as "one of the most religious postapocalyptic tales since Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz." The novel is, in fact, about the survival of hope and compassion in a hopeless and cruel world. McCarthy brings his world to some pretty low depths, but the point of all that despair is to hint, in the novel's closing pages, that humanity will survive against all odds. (It's a bit surprising to see those themes emerge in the story, given that McCarthy is not exactly known for his optimism.) But that's the overwhelming narrative of postapocalyptic stories in general, as I've arguedelsewhere: hope for survival, order emerging from chaos, the perseverance of the human spirit. If anything, it's the idea that humanity can survive divine wrath that might drive away the Left Behind crowd-- just as McCarthy isn't known for optimism, Tim LaHaye isn't known for humanism. But it's that story of compassion and redemption that makes The Road so impressively religious, so apocalyptically compelling. Will conservative Christians be able to get past the cannibalism to see it? Personally, I doubt it-- I expect the same puritanical impulses that led to the protests against the deeply Christological The Last Temptation of Christ will hold sway here as well.

One thing I noticed was resistance to the idea that this could
actually be a story about religion. Numerous theorists (including
Stephen King) have read possession as code for something else that we
fear either consciously or sub-consciously. According to most film
theorists, The Exorcist is actually about fear of the counter-culture, fear of children, fear of women, etc. Conversely, many critics who thought The Exorcist was actually about demonic possession found it distasteful. S.T. Joshi, for instance, characterizes Blatty as a Catholic evangelist and The Exorcist as a sort of hellfire sermon.

While psychoanalytical readings are interesting, I don’t believe they can explain the behavior of audiences watching The Exorcist
in 1973. I think those reactions can be attributed to a very literal
fear of demonic possession. Furthermore, I think these readings of the
film point to a disconnect between popular religion and the idea of
secularization. The secularization narrative is so powerful, that even
when audiences are fainting from terror while watching The Exorcist,
it is assumed that this is the catharsis of some repressed and
previously unknown fear, rampant in our collective subconscious,
because the idea that modern Westerners could actually be afraid of the
devil seems an impossibility.

And way at the bottom are some very interesting thoughts on apocalyptic folk piety vs. anti-millenarian ecclesiastic religion. It's a great interview, and well worth checking out.

I went to college with Joe. He is a very smart guy, and knows more about the sociology of religion than I ever will. However, I know way more than he does about SF, and probably about comics, too. Maybe if you put us together we would turn into some kind of religion-and-pop-culture robot, and we could fight a giant flying lizard. Also, he is handsome, has good taste in music, and did not pay me to say any of the above.

October 19, 2009

Repent! Next Sunday, I will be speaking on a panel at the First Annual Doomsday Film Fest & Symposium. The festival runs from Friday Oct. 23rd to Sunday Oct. 25th at the DCTV Theater in New York, and will feature great tales of the end times and after like Mad Max 2 (probably better-known to most of you as The Road Warrior), War Games, and Return of the Living Dead.

My panel, "The End is Nigh: Prophecies of the End Times from the Rapture to 2012," is coupled with a screening of Michael Tolkin's hallucinatory apocalyptic fable The Rapture. Far from being a dispensationalist tract, Tolkin's story (which stars Mimi Rogers and pre-X-Files David Duchovny) is a psychodrama about the nature of belief, and it's certainly one of the stranger movies about religion you'll ever see.

As if that weren't enough, the panel is followed by a screening of David Cronenberg's first feature film, Shivers (a.k.a. They Came From Within, a.k.a. Orgy of the Blood Parasites). All the weirdness you'd expect from Cronenberg is fully present in this early film, about a aphrodisiac venereal disease that turns people into sex-crazed monsters-- the movie leaves the definite sense that the total collapse of society (and hidebound morality) is not a bad thing.

In addition to the Sunday afternoon panel, I will now also be moderating the Friday evening panel "Doomsday Over the Ages"-- which is pretty exciting, not least of all because the panel is followed by a screening of The Road Warrior!

June 14, 2009

I can't discuss Moon without giving away major elements of the plot. Therefore:

Spoilers ahead.

Moon is the story of Sam Bell—the sole inhabitant of a moon base that gathers energy to be sent back to Earth. He's on a three-year contract, with two weeks left to go, and the solitude has been getting to him—especially since a damaged communications satellite prevents any real-time communication with his family. He's starting to see things, and it's interfering with his work. While working outside the base, one hallucination causes an accident, and he wakes up in the medical bay with no memory of what happened. He wants to leave the base to get the damaged equipment up and running again, but Gerty, his robotic assistant, won't let him leave. He manages to trick the computer into letting him take a quick moonwalk, and once outside the base he investigates the site of the accident, where he finds... another Sam Bell. There follows some great, tense scenes between the two, as they alternately try to pretend that nothing strange is going on and figure out their bizarre situation.

Before long they are able to squeeze the answer out of Gerty: they're clones of the original Sam Bell, who left the base twelve years ago. Their "three-year contract" is actually a capped life-span, at the end of which their bodies begin to deteriorate and are incinerated. Communications with Earth are being artificially blocked, and the taped conversations he's been having with his wife are fake. Everything he's been living for is an illusion, and, in the Dickian tradition, he's forced to cope with realization of the truth.

Sam Rockwell is a pretty amazing actor, and this movie is a fine showcase for that—it's virtually a one-man show (though I certainly don't want to downplay the contribution of Kevin Spacey, the voice of the very HAL-like Gerty). In the hands of a lesser actor this might have ended up schlocky, but he powerfully communicates the soul-wrecking disillusionment the two Bells experience. (The scene in which the older Bell finally establishes contact with his daughter on Earth is particularly devastating.)
As one might expect from a movie about clones, the core of the story involves questions of identity. Each of these beings truly, completely believes that he is the original, real Sam Bell, that he will return to Earth at the end of his contract, that his wife and infant daughter are waiting for him. And who's to say they're wrong? They have the memories and the emotions that go along with them. They have, dare I say it, the soul of Sam Bell. But the company that runs the moon base treats them as objects, as machines like Gerty. But there are hints that Gerty may have emotions of his own. He does seem to malfunction a bit, like HAL 9000. But rather than going on a homicidal rampage, his malfunction manifests itself as compassion. He's programmed to help Sam Bell, and help him he does—at the film's end, he's instrumental in sending one of the clones back to Earth. There are multiple Turing tests going on in this story, and both clone and machine pass them with flying colors.